of an English mob around their fellow-creatures, when engaged in furious battle, in which it is poffible, that fome of the combatants may receive a mortal blow, and be hurried, dreadful thought! in this awful ftate, to the bar of his Judge.

"Let us furvey the multitudes which, in every part of the king dom, always attend an execution. It may perhaps he faid, that, in all places the vulgar have little of the fenfibility and tenderness of more polifhed bofoms. But, in the fast mentioned inftance, an execution, there is no exultation in the fufferings of the poor criminal. He is regarded by every eye with the moit melting compaffion. The whole affembly fympathizes with him in his unhappy fituation. An awful fillness prevails at the dreadful moment. Many are wrung with unutterable fenfations: and prayer and filence declare, more loudly than any language could, the intereft they feel in his diftrefs. Should a reprieve come to rescue him from death, how great is the general triumph and congratulation! And, probably, in this multitude you will find, not the mere vulgar herd alone, but the man of fuperior knowledge, and of more refined fenfibility; who, led by fome ftrong principle, which we wish to explain, feels a pleasure greater than all the pain, great and exquifite as one fhould imagine it to be, from fuch a spectacle.

"The man who condemns many of the scenes we have already mentioned as barbarous and fhocking, would, probably, run with the greate eagerness to fome high cliff, overhanging the ocean, to fee it fwelled into tempeft, though a poor veffel, or even a fleet of veffels, were to appear as one part of the

dreadful fcenery, now lifted to the heavens on the foaming furge, now plunged deep into the fathomlefs abyfs, and now dashed upon the rocks, where they are, in a moment, fhivered into fragments, and, with all their mariners, entombed in the wave. Or, to vary the queftion a little; Who would not be forward to fland fafe, on the top of fome mountain or tower, adjoining to a field of battle, in which two. armies meet in defperate conflict, though, probably, thoufands may foon lie before him proftrate on the ground, and the whole field prefent the mott horrid fcenes of carnage and defolation?

"That, in all these cafes, pleafure predominates in the compounded feeling, is plain from hence, becaufe you continue to furvey the fcene; whereas when pain became the ftronger fenfation, you would certainly retire. I was lately in company with a gentleman, who defcribed to me, in very glowing and picturefque colours, an engagement between two privateers, of which he had been a fpectator from one of the cliffs on the eaflern coaft of England. Several lives were loft; and the conteft was long, doubtful, and fevere. Having this fubject in my thoughts, I asked him, whether he felt ple fure in the fpectacle. He answered with great energy, that he would not have miffed the fight for a very confiderable fum. His tone and manner proved that he spoke from his heart.

"Cultivation may, indeed, have produced fome minuter differences in the tafte and feelings of different minds. Thofe, whofe fenfibilities have not been refined by education or fcience, may feel the pleasure in a more grofs and brutal form. But do not the most polished na

tures

perty and dominion were in feveral intances decided by referring to this Homeric chart. Another evidence of Homer's travels he derives from his lively delineations of national character, which he obferves are marked with fuch precifion, and fupported throughout with fuch confittency, as not to allow us to think that he could have acquired fuch knowledge of mankind from any other fource but his own obferva

tions.

"It is more than probable Homer did not commit his poems to writing: it is mere conjecture whether that invention was actually in existence at the time he lived: there is nothing in his works that favours this conjecture, and in fuch a cafe filence is fomething more than negative. The retention of fuch compofitions is certainly an aftonishing effort of the human memory; but instances are not wanting of the like nature in early and uncivilized states, and the memory is capable of being expanded by habit and exercife to an extraordinary and almost unlimited compafs. Unwritten compofitions were always in verfe; and metre was certainly used in aid of memory. It must not however be taken for a confequence that writing first came into ufe, when Pherecy des and Cadmus firft compofed in profe as fome have imagined; for it undoubtedly obtained before their time, and was probably brought into Greece from Phoenicia.

"The engraving of the laws of Draco is fuppofed to have been the first application of that art; but it was a work of labour, and required the tool of the artist, rather than the hand of the penman. Thales and Pythagoras left us no writings behind them, though they fpread

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their learning over Greece, and from their fchools peopled it with philofophers. The unwritten drama was long in existence before any compofitions of that fort were committed to writing. Solon's laws were engraved in wood or ftone, and there appears to have been but one table of them. Of Lycurgus's regulations there was no written re. cord; the mind of the judge was the depofitary of the law. Draco published his laws in Olym. xxxix; Pififtratus died in Olymp. lxiii: a century had nearly paffed between the publication of thefe laws and the first inftitution of a public library at Athens: great advances no doubt were made within that period in the art of writing; nevertheless it was by no means an operation of facility in Piliftratus's time, and this compilation of Homer's Iliad and Odyffey was a work of vast labour and of royal expence. The book remained at Athens as a princely monument of his munificence and love of letters. His library was reforted to by all men of fcience in Greece, but copies of the work were not circulated till the time of the Ptolemies: even Alexander of Macedon, when he had poffeffed himself of a complete copy of his favourite poet, locked it up in the rich cheft, of which he had defpoiled king Darius, as the moft worthy cafe in which he could inclofe fo ineflimable a treafure. When a copy of Homer was confidered by a prince as a poffeffion fo rare, it cannot be fuppofed his written works were in many hands. As for the detached thapfodies, which Lycurgus in more early times brought with him out of Afia, they must have been exceedingly imperfect, though it is to be prefumned they were in writing."

fenfations, which the foul feels, in reading the fufferings of heroes, who nobly died in the caufe of liberty, and their country:

"When the pious band

tion. The caufe affigned by Mr. 'Addison, the fenfe of our own fecurity, may be fuppofed to have fome thare in the mafs of feelings. That of Dr. Akenfide may be al

their fires,

Or dash Octavius from his trophied car;
Say-Does thy fecret foul repine to tafte
The big diftrefs? Or, would't thou then
exchange

Thofe heart-ennobling forrows for the lot
Of him, who fits amid the gaudy herd
Of mute barbarians, bending to his nod,
And bears aloft his gold-invested front,
And fays within himself, "I am a king,
And wherefore should the clamorous voice

of woe
Intrude upon mine ear?"

«The fentiment of this charming and moral poet is, that fympathetic feelings are virtuous, and therefore pleasant. And from the whole, he deduces this important conclufion; that every virtuous emotion must be agreeable, and that this is the fanction, and the reward of virtue. The thought is amible. The conclufion noble. But fill the folution appears to me to be imperfect.

"We have already faid, that the pleafure ariting from the contemplation of diftrefsful fcenes is a compounded feeling, arifing from feveral distinct fources in the human breaft. The kind and degree of the fenfation must depend upon the various blendings of the feveral ingredients which enter into the compofi

tion. Let us attempt to trace fome of the rest.

"There are few principles in human nature of more general and important influence, than that of fympathy. A late ingenious writer, led by the fashionable idea of fimplifying all the fprings of human nature into one fource, has, in his beautiful Theory of Moral Sentiments, endeavoured to analyse a very large number of the feelings of the heart into fympathetic vibration. Though it appears to me moft probable, that the human mind, like the human body, poffeffes various and distinct springs of action and of happiness, yet he has fhewn, in an amazing diversity of inftances, the operation and importance of this principle of human nature. Let us apply it to our prefent fubject.

"We naturally fympathize with the paffions of others. But, if the paffions they appear to feel be not thofe of mere diftrefs alone; if, midft the fcenes of calamity, they difplay fortitude, generofity, and forgivenefs; if, rifing fuperior to the cloud of ills which covers them," they nobly stand firm, collected, and patient; here, a stil! higher fource of pleasure opens upon us, from complacence, admiration, and that unutterable fympathy, which the heart feels with virtuous and heroic minds. By the operation of this principle, we place ourselves in their firuation; we feel, as it were, some share of that confcious integrity and peace, which they must enjoy. Hence, as before obferved, the pleasure will vary,

both

both as to its nature and degree, according to the fcene and characters before us. The fhock of contending armies in the field, the ocean wrought to tempeft, and covered with the wreck of fhattered veffels, --and a worthy family filently, yet nobly bearing up against a multitude of furrounding forrows, will excite very different emotions, becaufe the component parts of the pleafurable fenfation confift of very different materials. They all excite admiration; but admiration, how diversified, both as to its degree and its caufe! Thefe feveral ingredients may, doubtlefs, be fo blended together, that the pleasure fhall make but a very fmall part of the mixed fenfation. The more agreeable tints may bear little proportion to the terrifying red, or the gloomy black.

66

"In many of the inftances which have been mentioned, the pleafure muft arife chiefly, if not folely, from the circumftances, or accompanyments of the fcene. The fablime feelings excited by the view of an agitated ocean, relieve and foften thofe occafioned by the fhipwreck. And the awe excited by the prefence of thousands of men, acting as with one foul, and difplaying magnanimity and firmnefs, in the most folemn trial, tempers thofe fenfations of horror and of pain, which would arife from the field of battle.

"The gratification we are at tempting to account for, depends alfo, in a very confiderable degree, upon a principle of human nature, implanted in it for the wifeft ends; the exercise which it gives to the mind, by routing it to energy and feeling. Nothing is fo infupport able, as that languor and ennui, for the full expreffion of which, our language does not afford a

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term. How agreeable it is, to have the foul called forth to exertion and fenfibility, let the Gamefter witnefs, who, unable to endure the laffitude and famenefs of unanimated luxury, runs with eagerness to the place where, probably, await him. all the irritation and agony of tumultuous paflions.

"Again; it a law of our nature, that oppofite paffions, when felt in fucceffion, and, above all, when felt at the fame moment, heighten and increafe each other. Eafe fucceeding pain, certainty after fafpenfe, friendship after averfion, are unfpeakably ftronger than if they had not been thus contrafted. In this conflict of feelings, the mind rifes from paffive to active energy. It is roufed to intense sensation; and it enjoys that peculiar, exquifite, and complex feeling, in which, as in many articles of our table, the acid and the fweet, the pleasurable and painful pungencies are fo happily mixed together, as to render the united fenfation amazingly more ftrong and delightful.

"We have not yet mentioned. the principle of curiofity, that bufy and active power, which appears fo early, continues almost unimpaired fo long, and to which, for the wifeft ends, is annexed fo great a fenfe of enjoyment. To this principle, rather than to a love of cruelty, would I afcribe that pleasure, which children fometimes feem to feel from torturing flies and leffer animals. They have not yet formed an idea of the pain they inflict. It is, indeed, of unfpeakable confequence, that this practice be checked as foon and as effectually as poffible, because it is fo important, that they learn to connect the ideas of pleafure and pain, with the motions and actions of the animal creation. And, to this principle may

H

we